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Wednesday, November 26, 2014

I'm looking for a few bloggers who would like to help me with an experiment. I'd especially like bloggers from around Africa (especially from Botswana), but will also consider bloggers living other places.

I have a novel, The Vanishings, that has been accepted for publication by two publishing houses, but for reasons I'd not like to get into, I've had to take it back from both of them. The Vanishings and I are feeling slightly battle worn and don't feel like taking any more walks toward publishers together. I thought, instead, I would serialise it on my blog. I thought, starting maybe next year February, I'd put a chapter on my blog every Thursday for folks to read. Then I thought what might be even nicer was if other bloggers agreed to do the serialisation too. And then I thought how this might be an interesting way for us to share our writing. To make a certain day of the week the day for serialised novels. I'll try to think of a sexy name to describe that day. All ideas are welcome!

Would you be interested in participating? If you are, send me an email (lakubuitsile@gmail.com) and I can send you the book so you can see if it is something you like. If you then are interested in being part of this, when I start I will send the prepared chapter to you a few days before it needs to be posted. I will do my best to push traffic toward the various participating blogs on the chapter days through here and social media.

The Vanishings is a detective/thriller set in the tourist town of Maun in Botswana. Here is a brief description:

"Five people seem
to have vanished in thin air. Their only connection is that they were snatched
in the bush around Maun. No bodies have been recovered. No suspects found.
Detective Dambuza Chakalisa, newly arrived in the sleepy tourist town, is
probably the worst choice to investigate this case. He drinks too much. He’s
preoccupied with his marriage that is falling apart and to top it off, he
doesn’t know anyone in Maun to give him a lead in the case.But he’s about to get help.

On the way to work
his first day, he happens upon an older white woman beating the crap out of a
young man. It turns out to be the tough, no nonsense Delly Woods dealing with a
man who mistakenly thought he could take her cellphone. An unlikely duo, but
together Dambuza and Delly will uncover the truth behind the vanishings as well
as a few other secrets certain people might have preferred not to have come
out"

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

No matter if you are a freelance magazine article
writer or a short story writer, at some point you will need to negotiate a
deal. If you’re a freelance article writer you will need to turn your query
into an article that will be bought and paid for in a reasonable time. The
problem is that most writers are not business savvy. At some point negotiating
will mean talking about money, which many of us have been taught is rude. It’s
a very fine line one must walk to appear assertive and willing to protect your
own interests, as opposed to being too hard and rigid. You must keep in mind at
all times- this is a business arrangement. The editor has the parameters that
she must work inside of, but so do you. Here are some tips to help make the
process less painful.

1. Assist
a busy editor

You’ve sent your query for an article to the
magazine and the editor is interested. She sends an email asking for more
details about how you will approach the article’s topic. You could email back
with ideas but you and she might take a few emails to get to a point where the
offer to write the article is on the table. Sometimes you need to make money to
earn money. At that point, I would pick up the phone and call the editor, even
one in a foreign country (keep track of time zones though, no one wants to wake
up an editor at 4 am). This way you can hear what she is looking for and you
can assure her that is exactly what she will get. It’s a good way to establish
a relationship with the editor as well.

2.
Always ask for more than you will accept

Once you have agreed to write an article or story,
now it’s time to negotiate the terms. In every instance when I’m offered a
writing job or a book deal, I ask for a bit more than they offer. Not crazy
over the top, just a bit more. They can say yes or no. Then you must know in
your mind what you will accept. If they offer you 25 thebe per word to write a
2000 word article and you know you will spend more than P500 on travel and
phone charges to get your interviews, then what’s the point? Don’t say
exposure- exposure does not feed your kids. And don’t say to get your foot in
the door. All that you’re showing this editor is that you are willing to write
for 25 thebe per word and that is all they will ever offer you.

3. Look
at the total package

I am not saying money is the only factor to consider
when accepting a writing job. I’ve had instances where a publication wants to
pay me P500 to use a short story and they want to take all of the rights to
that story. What that means is I cannot sell that story again, they own it.
What I would do in that instance is offer them the choice: they can either pay
me significantly more or they can pay me P500 for one time rights. Or
alternatively, let’s say a publication wants you to write an article for a fee
below your normal rate. You might agree, but then ask them to pay all phone and
travel expenses for you to go and interview people for the article. In most
instances, you can find areas where the deal can be improved even if the budget
is very tight.

4. When
are you being paid?

One thing to always look out for is when payment
will be made. When writing articles, there is wide discrepancy regarding this.
Being paid when the final article is submitted can be very different from being
paid when the article is published. I write for one publication that often uses
my stories even a year or more after they’ve been accepted. Imagine if you must
wait for your pay for more than a year? Or what if they assign you the article,
you write it, the editor accepts it, but for some reason they end up not using
it? Shouldn’t you still be paid since you did the work? Always push for payment
at final acceptance of the article. This is another place where you can
occasionally take a lesser fee if they agree to pay at acceptance.

Negotiating fees when you’re a writer can be
difficult and something you’re likely uncomfortable with. It’s best you see
writing as a business and approach the money side in a professional and
businesslike manner.

(This appeared first in my column in The Voice newspaper, It's All Write, 7 November 2014)

Monday, November 17, 2014

I'm currently taking an online writing course at the University of Iowa. Each week we watch a video and are given an assignment around the issues brought up in the video. The week before last we were learning about ways constraints on your writing can force you to look closer at it, particularly at individual sentences. Constraints might include the number of words in each sentence, for example writing a piece where each sentence is only seven words.

In my case, I chose writing a piece where each sentence must have a number in it. I've realised that doing this does indeed improve the quality of the sentences. It was a great exercise and I'm planning to use this when I begin my next longer work of fiction, mostly because in longer works the space actually removes constraint and, at least for me, leads to flabbier sentences.

Below is my piece: Five Blankets.

***

Five Blankets

He murdered a man at
twenty-four. In the prison where they sent him, he shared one big room with
tiny windows high up near the ceiling that let in no breeze on forty degree
days. Seventy men can make a mighty smell, he realised, a solid, alive smell
that moved around and slapped you every now and then, reminding you about the
seriousness of the situation. Though he was a murderer he had two non-murderer
traits: a soft heart and the inability to identify evil.

That
first night, he was given five blankets and told to find a space on the floor.
Blanket number one, he rolled into a pillow. Blanket number two and three he
folded into thirds and used as a mattress against the hard, concrete floor. He
covered himself with blanket number four. Blanket number five he rolled up and
lay next to him. The first night he pretended it was his long ago girlfriend,
the girl who lived next door to them when he was ten, Carmela; Carmela made the
night shorter. The second night, blanket number five was the woman he left
behind when the prison doors shut behind him, the woman he’d murdered for; she
promised good would prevail despite all evidence to the contrary.

On the third night, when
everything became too real no matter how he twisted his mind, when seven men
promised they’d “get him” before the week finished, when the bed bugs and the
heat and the prison guards high with their small power picked and poked him
until ignoring was not an option, blanket number five became his mother. He became her little boy, her three year old
boy afraid of the monster rattling under the bed. His mother hugged him and all seventy men
disappeared in the fierce light of her love.

His mother stayed with him
until day thirty-two when Prisoner 538 tried to steal the rolled up blanket
lying next to him. He couldn’t allow that, and with four blows and a kick, he
murdered his second man, again in defence of the ones he loved.

Monday, November 10, 2014

I have a quote from Wendell Mayes on my office wall- "You're only willing to succeed to the same degree you're willing to fail." I read it often. I read it when I'm about to send a short story out to a new magazine and I'm hesitating because I'm afraid of them saying no. I read it when I think that the new novel I've started is far too ambitious for my writing skills and it might never find a publisher. I read it when I'm preparing for a speech or panel discussion where I know people in the audience are far more accomplished than I am.

I remind myself when I read that quote, that if I want to accomplish anything, I have to accept that if it is tough, if it is new to me, if it is intimidating- that's a good thing. That means I'm stretching myself. That means I'm at that wonderful edge where success and failure are only centimetres apart, but the only place where learning and growth can take place. And it reminds me that failure at that edge is not a bad thing. It's okay. At that edge we must fail and fail until we succeed, and then the edge moves out a bit more, and we must run at it head first once again.

Society teaches us failing is bad. And so we get a bit of success, and then just keep doing that thing over and over and live in our mediocre success filled world. For me that's not living. Living is growing, and growing requires us to reach and sometimes to fall.

I'm thinking of this after the workshop I did for primary kids at the library in Maun during the Maun International Arts Festival. I read them a story and then asked them to review it. When it came time to read their reviews, they didn't want to. They were scared they'd got it wrong, that maybe their opinion was not the "correct" one. They were afraid that they would fail. Because of that they couldn't act. They were stopped like statues. It was one of the saddest things I'd seen for a long time.

Let's fail. Let's fail big.Like my quote says, only big success comes from being able to accept that big failure is also an option. That's okay. I'm fine with that. I'm willing to take that risk.
What about you?

Thursday, November 6, 2014

I'm back home from the Maun International Arts Festival. It's our only literary festival in Botswana with any staying power, so I'm always keen to be there to support the organisers, Poetavango, a performance poetry group based in Maun.

Despite late funding and the elections, they managed against quite incredible odds to pull off a wide ranging festival that included workshops on prose, theatre, poetry and music, and another one for kids at the library. There were shows most nights: comedy, people with disabilities, poetry and jazz, the book exhibition opening with the launch of Chimurenga Chronic in Botswana, and the final big event on Saturday.

The invited poets, because still at heart it is a performance poetry festival, were taken up the Thamalakane River to visit a traditional village and to learn about some Setswana culture. It is a wide ranging Festival run by a devoted and hard-working team, all volunteers. A group I respect completely.

Now I'm back home and back stuck into my work, hoping I'll stay put for a while. We've had lovely rains and the trees have leaved out and the grass has gone green and the birds are singing and I'm happy back in my little office, back to my words and sentences, back to my stories. Away is good, but it also shows you that home is pretty nice too.

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About Me

I'm Lauri Kubuitsile. I'm a full-time, award-winning writer living in Botswana. I have numerous published books for both kids and adults, across various genres, and my short stories have been published around the world.
I have won the Pan-African prize for children's writing, The Golden Baobab, twice. I won the Bessie Head Literature Award for short story, the 2007 AngloPlatinum Short Story Contest, and the Botswana's Department of Arts and Culture, 2007 Botswerere Award for Creative Writing. I was shortlisted for the 2011 Caine Prize.

NEWS!!! NEWS!!!! NEWS!!!! NEWS!!!! NEWS!!! NEWS!!!

- Lauri's book, Signed, The Secret Keeper (the second instalment of her Amogelang Sethunya series) is now out, published by Diamond Educational Publishers!!

-In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata and Other Stories is now available in print!!! It's published by Hands-On Books. Get it HERE. It is published as an ebook by HopeRoad- London. All stories in the collection are set in Botswana. Buy it HERE.

My Writing Successes

I have numerous published books, including three books from my Kate Gomolemo Detective series; The Fatal Payout (Macmillan 2005) , Murder for Profit (Pentagon 2008) and Anything for Money (Vivlia 2010). My children's book Mmele and the Magic Bones (Pentagon 2008) was short-listed for the African Writers Prize (UK) and has since been chosen as a set book for all primary schools in Botswana.

My book The Fatal Payout is a set work for all junior secondary school students in Botswana. Two of my books The Second Worst Thing (Oxford University Press) and The Curse of the Gold Coins (Vivlia) are CAPS approved in South African schoold for grade 7.

My short stories have won numerous prizes including first prize in the 2007 BTA/AngloPlatinum Short Story Contest, and twice winning highly commended in the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Short Story Contest. I won the Golden Baobab Prize in both 2009 and 2010, first in the junior section and the following year the senior section. My stories can be found on four continents; online, in print literary and popular magazines, and in anthologies.

In 2005, I was among three writers short-listed for our national, biannual prize for creative writing the Orange/Botswerere Prize. In 2007, I took first position for the same prize. In 2011 I was short-listed for The Caine Prize.

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The Second Worst Thing

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SOME OF THE BOOKS BY LAURI KUBUITSILE

Below see some of the covers of Lauri's books.

Signed, Hopelessly in Love

YA book published by Tafelberg. Now available!! Click the book to BUY!

Curse of the Gold Coins

As if Leano doesn't have enough problems trying to solve the problem of school fees. Now she's caught up in solving a crime that took place a hundred years ago. She must vindicate her great, great grandmother and hopefully the curse of the gold coins will disappear. Now CAPS approved in South Africa for grade 7!